By Jennifer Abrusia
We spent the better part of a year designing and planning a “Sea-bbatical”, which for us, was the odd combination of one month sailing the islands of Guadeloupe in The Lesser Antilles, followed up by flying to the other side of the earth for six weeks of exploring Thailand by all modes of transit, including sailing. We have been fortunate enough to sail the Caribbean waters several times, so the piece-de-resistance of this adventure was to be spending the last few weeks sailing the Andaman Sea of Thailand. We researched bareboat chartering but discovered, contrary to everything else in Thailand being very inexpensive, this was going to be a bit too pricey for our very strict budget. Having crewed on a few boats before with great success, we decided this was the next best option. Using Find a Crew, a reputable, global network portal for connecting boats and crew directly, we found “Captain Jeremy.” For the next several months we communicated via WhatsApp about timing and potential routes. We explained that we were flexible to a degree and were very understanding when he changed the dates on us several times. We had the dream and there was not much that could knock those rose-colored glasses from our faces.
As the months passed and the details needed ironing out, we began noticing a few quirks in our captain. The first was that his text messages would come in carpet bombs. Dozens of texts would roll in one after another, often without any clear order or train of thought to follow. Then there was an inability to offer a clear start date or meet-up location, which we were still ok with as we had a backpackers plan for Thailand, which meant no plan, but we are solidly middle-aged, and this freeness can only go so far, especially when there are not many options to crew in this area (a detail we were acutely aware of). We carried on enjoying all that unfolded in this once in a lifetime adventure, fielding the random text barrage, and repeatedly nudging for a day and location, until there was only a matter of weeks left. With an obvious change in our tone, we insisted this be decided as we were in the far north, along the Myanmar-Thai border, and making our way to the potential meet up locations was going to require a bus or a plane and the time to book them appropriately. Finally, he submitted, for lack of a better term, and Phuket on the twelfth of February became the plan.
Click to read the rest of this story and see more great photos.
